How We Got Here
Chapter I
A World Left Behind
From 2068, flare after flare broke Earth's power, water and supply. Project Icarus moved the government to the Moon and sent millions to Mars; the last ships left in 2087. In 2095 a lunar programme fired Darwin Mark 8 into the atmosphere, a catalyst meant to help surviving life adapt. Then the Veil closed over the planet, and nobody could say for certain what lived beneath it.
Chapter II
The Return
The Moon kept the institutions; Mars carried most of the people. War, the Burn and eighty years of food-for-technology trade bound the rivals together while their habitats wore out. In 2207 the Sun is finally quieter, and the first return missions launch with competing sponsors and competing goals. FLARE-01 is one of them: a small crew sent to find out whether Earth can be lived on again.
Chapter III
The Fall, and the Wildlands
During the descent, something failed. Guidance went unreliable, corrections did nothing, and FLARE-01 came down hard in Australia. Nobody yet knows why. The survivors have a wreck, a damaged expedition AI and a landscape the old maps no longer describe. Beyond the salvaged perimeter, life has changed. New ecosystems. New rules. Learn them, or Earth will break you.
The Prologue · 8-page comic
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